The Club

When the style and grace of Project Gotham Racing turns homicidal

Ever feel like there are too many cutscenes jammed into your action game? Wouldn't you rather just pick up a gun (or two) and start blasting your way through hoods and thugs? Of course you would, and The Club promises such a rush.

The game, which is being described as "paintball with bullets," ditches any kind of narrative structure and focuses solely on beating your own high score. Players take control of a SWAT-garbed character running around a contemporary cityscape, with the aim being to take out as many enemies as possible in a given time and climb the ranks of this underground society. The idea is that you cannot stop moving and there's always a target on your head.

While the scoring system is still being worked on, it's currently based around a pinball-style multiplier system in which you have but eight seconds to take out another foe. Grenades and other explosives can tab multiple targets at once, pushing the combo higher. With the clock constantly against you, players are forced to sprint through the rundown locations at a relentlessly frantic pace, in battle-scarred buildings that span the globe.

Like any good arcade game, no matter how good you are, it's always possible to replay levels and improve your score and play "just one more time." The intense five-minute demo - during which our man from Bizarre Creations managed to take out 32 rivals - gave us only a brief taste of what the game will offer... but already we're itching to see more.

Beyond that, little else is being revealed about the next-gen game. The only other details we could pry from Bizarre is that The Club will feature "lots" of online modes and that the development team has already started to think of ways to utilize the tilt function in the new PS3 pad. Well, sort of: "We've got some ideas but we were very drunk at the time."